Unique pastries like orange olive oil cake, alfajores
(butter cookies with dulce de leche, coconut, and powdered sugar) and St. James cake
(gluten-free spanish cake with ground almonds instead of flour). They also have an assortment of pies you can pre-order. less

As the name suggests, the menu is full of cupcakes. But you can also order full size cakes and cake pops.

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Above, inside the Lakeside Diner in Stamford. Below, the diner’s signature doughnuts only come plain or with sugar.

Above, inside the Lakeside Diner in Stamford. Below, the diner’s signature doughnuts only come plain or with sugar.

Photo: Jane Stern / For Hearst Connecticut Media Group

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Doughnuts at the Lakeside Diner in Stamford come plain or with sugar.

Doughnuts at the Lakeside Diner in Stamford come plain or with sugar.

Photo: Jane Stern / For Hearst Connecticut Media Group

Lakeside Diner’s simple doughnuts just her style

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As a food writer I have gotten into trouble more than once for saying mean things about doughnuts. Years back when I had a show on National Public Radio I expressed my firm belief that Krispy Kreme doughnuts were nothing more then over-sugared hot grease wads, adding that if they were served cold no one would go near them. The backlash was formidable. Recently, in another venue I said I was sick of over-elaborate doughnuts, a fad that has swept the country from coast to coast. These over-the-top doughnuts are ridiculous, more frosting then a wedding cake, filled with discordant ingredients like bacon and marshmallows. The bottom line is that like a rock ribbed New Englander I like doughnuts plain.

A good doughnut does not need gilding on the lily. It should, at most, have a sprinkle of cinnamon-sugar on it. More important is that it should be recently fried in clean oil. No one should wonder if the doughnut oil was also used for frying fish and chips.

With that said I say the best doughnuts in Fairfield County, if not the whole state, is found at the Lakeside Diner in Stamford.

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The Lakeside Diner has been around for more than 50 years. It still looks like a high-school malt shop. There are swivel stools at the counter and some tables and chairs. If you can, grab a table near the back window and you will not believe your eyes.

From the back window of the diner is a gorgeous travel-brochure-like vista of a placid lake with birds floating on the surface. Looking at this remarkable scenery you forget you are a stone’s throw from the Merritt Parkway exit and are at a blue-plate-special kind of place and not a romantic getaway.

Once you feast on the scenery, feast on the food. Of course, you will start with doughnuts. I ordered six just for me and the waitress did not blink. The doughnuts are either plain or with sugar. They are fairly small and as modest and unprepossessing as a pastry can be. The doughnuts are so popular you will see large white bakery boxes waiting for clients who order a few dozen at a time. My personal six did not impress.

After the doughnuts, I suggest the pancakes. Again I am a stone-cold curmudgeon when it comes to pancakes. Chocolate chip pancakes, whipped cream mounds and gooey fake syrups are silly add ons, made for kids and not grown-ups who know the best pancakes are the plainest. A good pancake made from scratch is paper thing and very wide. It is ruffled around the darkened edges and meltingly tender. This is the way the Lake Side Diner makes them.

Your next tailgate NEEDS them.

Media: Delish

Pancakes should be historically revered; they are a quintessential American food, New England to the core. Johnnycakes, the cornmeal first cousin to pancakes made from wheat, is a good example of simpler being better. I have never seen a Rhode Island Johnnycake with chocolate chips and I hope I never do. At the Lakeside, unless you bring your own real maple syrup in lieu of the supermarket kind, all you need is a good lashing of butter for the perfect meal.

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Lakeside Diner

1050 Long Ridge Road, Stamford

203-322-2252

The menu offers pancakes with cut-up fruit — fresh strawberries, bananas and blueberries. Order the “red, white and blue” and you will get all of the above. A fancy doughnut meal on the menu that sounded inspired (but I found inedible) was Donut French Toast. I ordered it because it sounded cool, but what appeared were griddle-fried doughnuts in a soupy sauce covered with Nutella.

Not surprisingly the Lakeside makes a very nice waffle, a far cry from what many of us stick in our toaster for breakfast, and homemade muffins.

The surprise dish that won my heart was the home fries. I like home fries, but too often they taste like they were dumped out of a plastic supermarket bag. The Lakeside Diner’s version has two great things going for it. First the potatoes are fresh and hacked up in such a way that they do not crisp up in the traditional way, but roughly meld together. They are wonderfully seasoned and buttery. They are billed as a side dish, but what I was served filled up an entrée-sized plate. I liked them so much, I took home the overflow and had it for dinner with homemade applesauce.

The Lakeside Diner is an incongruous piece of vintage Americana. This one is a keeper.

Jane Stern, a Ridgefield resident, coauthored the popular “Roadfood” guidebook series with Michael Stern. Join her each week as she travels Fairfield County finding a great meal in unexpected places for $20 or less.